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Art Reviews: Clay Place, Guild shows mark milestones
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
By Mary Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Two standards of the Pittsburgh art scene, Manchester
Craftsmen's Guild and The Clay Place, mark milestones with
fine ceramics exhibitions that show off long established
artists as well as new faces.
The Clay
Place inaugurates its new Carnegie gallery with "40
UNDER 40: 40 Works by 40 Artists Under 40 Years of Age," a
sprightly lot that offers opportunity to see and compare
a mix of clay expression.
The ceramists, spread from Pittsburgh to Taiwan and ranging
from high school students to university faculty, have in common
their relationship with gallery owner Elvira Peake.
CAPA
students Julianne Sota and Cory Mastalski, for example,
show figural sculptures -- "Carefully Made With Water" and "Torso," respectively
-- that are experiments with color and form permeated with
beginner's energy and enthusiasm. In contrast is the refined
and concept-driven, burnished and smoke-fired "Circle" by
Sharif Bey, a former Manchester student who now teaches at
Winston Salem State University.
Other
highlights include Yoko Sekino Bove's "Binky Pressure," a
conceptual work about arranged endangered species mating;
Brandon O'Hara's "Birdbath," wherein actual duck wings
shelter a cluster of ducklings atop a mound of piled slabs;
Justin Rothshank's "Oil Can Pots," inspired by his Midwestern
boyhood and pertinent to today's politics; "Dear," Laura
Shaffalo Vincent's stand of leggy 6-inch-high deer; and Ian
Thomas' enigmatic "The Lazy Son," a preoccupied chicken head
on a rusty metal base.
Among
special functional pieces are Sara Patterson's elegant "Carved
Porcelain Platter"; Hannah Niswonger's delightful "Sugar
Bowls" with rattles in their lids; Joe Singewald's handsome,
petite "wood fired teapot"; and Christy Hedman's bright,
majolica-like "Punchbowl Set."
Most
works are for sale, the prices ranging from $30 to $1,800.
|
 |
| Eva
Kwong's "Bobtail" is part of "Ceramics Retrospective" at
the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild. |
"40
UNDER 40: 40 Works by 40 Artists Under 40 Years
of Age"
Where:
The Clay Place, 1 Walnut St., Carnegie
When:
Through Nov. 25; 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through
Saturdays
Information:
412-276-3260
"Ceramics
Retrospective: 20 Year Commemorative Exhibition"
Where:
Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, 1815 Metropolitan
St., North Side.
When:
Through Jan. 21, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through
Fridays and until 9 p.m. Tuesdays
Information::
412-322-1773 or www.manchesterguild.org. |
|
Ian
F. Thomas' "The Lazy Son"
is featured
in The Clay Place's "40 UNDER 40."
|
Peake moved her gallery and ceramic supply
shop from her longtime Shadyside location to Carnegie in
April but coincidently still has a Walnut Street address
-- in the Standard Ceramic Supply compound in Carnegie. She
says that people were a little slow to find her sunny, earth-toned
building, but that the number of visitors has been picking
up. Advantages here, she says with a smile, include free
parking and a monthly Friday pierogi sale at the blue-onion-domed
church nearby.
Her next
exhibition, which opens Dec. 1, will be "40 OVER
40," and is actually part one of three. When she began making
up a list of artists to invite, Peake was surprised to end
up with triple the number she needed to fill the gallery.
Such is the reward to being in business as long and as conscientiously
as she has been. |
Manchester
is marking its second decade at its North Side location
with "Ceramics Retrospective: 20 Year Commemorative Exhibition," a
show of 40 works by nine artists of national stature who
have contributed to the legacy of the Guild through exhibitions,
lectures and/or workshops.
Most have
donated a work for a silent auction concurrent with the exhibition
run that will benefit the Guild's Youth & Arts
program.
Linda Christianson
-- who will give a free public lecture at 6 p.m. Friday followed
by a reception -- wood fires her stoneware pieces and offers
at auction a four-sided "Striped Basket" with
ceramic handle (minimum bid $100).
Val Cushing,
a preeminent name in the studio art movement, makes functional
ware with timeless form. His covered stoneware "Storage
Jar" has highlights of blue and lavender with pale yellow ash
runs ($100).
The spirited
earthenware "New Mexico Landscape" by
Eddie Dominguez, its surface incised with Van Gogh-like energy
of line, sparkles with lustered greens, pinks, purples, yellows
and blues ($400).
Pittsburgher
Ed Eberle, who also shows his deconstructed figural sculpture,
donated "Circumstance," one
of the black on white, drawing-encircled porcelain vessels
for which he's nationally known ($500).
Eva Kwong's
19-inch-high, polka-dotted, nubbed stoneware "Blue
Acalephoid," a reference to ocean invertebrates, visually straddles
abstract form and fanciful animal ($500).
David MacDonald
also offers a covered "Storage Jar," but where
Cushing's is quiet, the surface of this incised piece vibrates
with yellow, green and black design on red earthenware ($350).
Somewhere
between is Chris Staley's "Covered Jar," its serene
pink to pale gold tones broken into subtle patterning by the
kiln, with black lid and loosely triangular black markings on
its body ($500).
James Watkins'
large, bold, footed "Double-Walled Bowl" -- black
with three crackled white circles inside -- is all the more remarkable
for having endured a raku firing ($350).
Also, Kirk
Mangus shows large sculpture with attitude made in his bulked,
expressionistic, anti-finesse style; but also a curious figural
pair, "Dog Boy" and "Cat Girl," which
seem inspired by comics, and with markings more reminiscent
of worked metal than of the artist's usual scarified surfaces.
(Post-Gazette
art critic Mary Thomas can be reached at mthomas@post-gazette.com or
412-263-1925. ) |
